Warning of phone scam.

Wow, that's so scary! If you want to solve this situation, I'd recommend the app Elefend. I use it, and the rest of my family does too. It blocks all scam calls using AI technology--super cool and works great! Let me know if you need help setting it up or anything.

About once a month or so, a scammer calls my Mom to tell her their Amazon account has been hacked and we need to call them right away to rectify it. It drives her crazy thinking the bank called, and there has been fraud on her debit card. There is no way we can convince her that the person on the phone is the scammer. She will not rest until she has called the bank, checked for fraud in their account, and cancelled her debit card. If I ever find out who those people are, I'm in for a jail sentence--unless the judge has elderly parents who are getting the same call every month. . .

I had a call like that but they were fishing for a bite. He didn't say his name and was trying to get me to say a family name. I played along for a while, said my brother's name and the caller immediately latched onto it. saying yes it was (my brother). But, I pointed out that he didn't sound right. so, he said that he had gotten beaten up at a trump rally (lol).I couldn't help myself. I laughed and said that (my brother) didn't even live in the United States. ....click.

Oh I agree GA. It is terrifying how much information people will put out there, knowing that there are predators just looking for a victim.

It's not like this is new news, it has been going on for a decade now and yet people still put their private interests out there.

ITRR, I totally agree that people are sharing too much information.    I really don't understand why either.    I think there's something fundamental in the way people interact, not in person but online, and this is being exploited.

I had an 93 year old friend that was scammed out of 2k and thank God that the Walmart worker was on duty 2 days in a row or who knows how much it would have been. Because she was there to send another 1,800 bucks to get her grandson out of a Mexican prison. This worker actually questioned her about the transaction and told her that she was being scammed. When she called her grandson she found out that he was fine and that he had never called. Special place in hell for these scumbags that prey on seniors and vulnerable people.

Social media creates an opportunity for people to share way to much information about their activities and their families names and locations. People are to....to realize that they are causing many of these opportunities by sharing their stories and activities on social media platforms that are not anonymous. Her grandson had posted about going to see grandma and what his itinerary was, clever aye?

Geaton.

Yep! The same thing happened to my uncle. His email was hacked and a man claiming to be one of my uncle’s contacts was asking him for money. My uncle didn’t give it to him.

It’s weird. I had my email hacked once too. The person who contacted me claimed to be my daughter.

This is really scary that this happened to you. I'm glad you didn't end up engaging with the scam caller, but I'm sure it gave you quite a fright. We really need to figure out ways to stop these scam callers because they can be really dangerous is the receiver doesn't know it's fake!

FF, it irks me as well that so much information is gathered and shared online.   I wonder if people share so much information on social media realize how it's leveraged to the benefit of the website owners.   Online tracking from website to website is also a chief complaint of mine.   

I got a few e-mail solicitations from a cleaning place after I had searched for heavy duty cleaning companies (one of the reasons I don't use Google for personal searches.)      It really irked me so I wrote back telling them not only to stop harassing me, but that since they contacted me w/o my consent, I would boycott them forever, and I would share their approach with others so they could boycott them as well.

I remember the power of boycotts, all the way back to the grape boycotts of the late 1960s into the early 1970s.   Privacy invaders are after data and sales, so I try to cut into the latter and foil their efforts.

Another thing that irks me is that the alleged familial information is soooo wrong.   The idiots who gather and compile the information have increased our family by people I never heard of, they've extended the lives of grandparents who have been deceased for 25 years (how could anyone believe that someone  almost 130 years old is still living??).  

I recently enjoyed the opportunity to put one of the flippers' advance scouts "off her game".    I blocked my number, called back and she answered, responding to my questions on why she called as that she was looking for a house, and was getting names and addresses from Lexis-Nexis.    She claimed she wasn't working for flippers (yeah, sure). 

What she didn't realize is that Lexis (originally a legal database) is also a database of homes, like county registers, but it's not a for sale site.

If you learn anything on opting out of sites that you've never visited otherwise, please let me know.   I think we would really have to opt-out of everything, including our e-mail providers.   

What I'd like to see is a class action suit against all the sites that are collecting and compiling data, including erroneous data.   But off hand, other than breach of privacy, I can't really think of grounds that would sustain a class action suit.

What really irks me is that anyone's name, address, and telephone number, plus names of relatives can easily be found on the Internet. Just put in your name and up will pop a couple dozen websites with such information for anyone to read.

I have had an unlisted telephone number for 40 years but there it is clear as day on numerous websites along with names of people who did NOT live with me, or are even related :P And my current and past addresses.

I need to go through those websites and see if I can opt out that information as it is no one's business.

@Repliers: thanks for the feedback. There was a sickening moment when the call seemed legit and then my native suspicious nature took hold, thank goodness. I knew of one grandpa who received "help I need bail money" scam and lost about $700. I'm wondering if the stim check issues to elders provide added impetus to scammers because those monies don't seem "real," in a way, and naturally a person wants to help their loved one. It wouldn't take much for the decision to be made to hand it over to one's "grandchild" or in my case, child.

What concerns me is that Spouse is gullible to believe so much of what enters the home, be it door to door sellers, emails wanting contributions and phone scams like this one. :( I am glad I took the call rather than him. :)

Pronker, thanks for sharing this event with others.     

I think this is a version of the "grandchild" calling home for money.    The perpetrator pretends to be someone else, relates a fictitious predicament and need for money, then hits on the individual he/she has called to  wire transfer or by other method send money to this allegedly suffering relative.

I think the perpetrators gamble on the fact that older people may not hear as well and be unable to discern that the caller isn't a relative.

I'm guessing also that if you have caller ID or a phone number showing on your phone, that it was blocked by this alleged accident victim.

I had something similar happen, only it was through email. Someone hacked into my friend's account and wrote her contacts that she was robbed while overseas and needed money wired to her asap. I'm not sure how many of her contacts got the email but we were able to figure it out before anyone sent anything to the scammer. This was probably about 10 years ago.